DOCS

Install the current prerelease

This guide installs v0.4.0-rc.3. Stable v0.1.0 has a separate binary-only first-test walkthrough . Your target application still needs its own runtime. The Playtestr binary does not require Go.

Download and verify#

Choose the exact host archive and its adjacent .sha256 file on the downloads page . Save both into the same directory. These examples assume the files have already been downloaded.

Windows amd64 (PowerShell)#

$archive = 'playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_windows_amd64.zip'
$expectedHash = (Get-Content ($archive + '.sha256')).Split(' ')[0]
if ((Get-FileHash $archive -Algorithm SHA256).Hash -ne $expectedHash) { throw 'Checksum mismatch' }
Expand-Archive -LiteralPath $archive -DestinationPath './playtestr rc3' -ErrorAction Stop
& './playtestr rc3/playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_windows_amd64/playtestr.exe' --version

Linux amd64 (shell)#

sha256sum --check playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_linux_amd64.tar.gz.sha256
mkdir 'playtestr rc3'
tar -xzf playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_linux_amd64.tar.gz -C 'playtestr rc3'
'./playtestr rc3/playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_linux_amd64/playtestr' --version

macOS arm64 (shell)#

shasum -a 256 --check playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_darwin_arm64.tar.gz.sha256
mkdir 'playtestr rc3'
tar -xzf playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_darwin_arm64.tar.gz -C 'playtestr rc3'
'./playtestr rc3/playtestr_0.4.0-rc.3_darwin_arm64/playtestr' --version

Stop if checksum verification fails. Confirm the executable reports playtestr v0.4.0-rc.3 before adding its directory to PATH. Extraction examples deliberately use a directory containing a space. Keep downloaded versions in separate directories.

Prove the test can fail#

Follow the first-test walkthrough with your verified rc.3 executable path in place of the stable executable. Its v1 greeting spec remains compatible: run a passing test, make the documented intentional assertion change, confirm a nonzero failure and restore the correct assertion. Do not overwrite a baseline merely to make a run pass.

The authoring recipes offer useful interactive targets with explicit prerequisites. Suites , offline HTML reports and workspaces document the newer capabilities separately.

Use in CI#

Pin the setup action and runner version independently using the GitHub Actions guide . The action verifies release identity; target setup, test execution and artifact upload remain explicit workflow steps.

Upgrade, remove and understand limits#

Read migration and rollback before adopting v2. Remove the version’s directory and any PATH entry you added to uninstall; baseline and test files remain your project data. Do not run recursive cleanup against guessed paths.

Rc.3 includes selected two-column CJK/fullwidth behavior, not universal Unicode layout. Combining clusters, emoji/ZWJ, ambiguous-width settings and terminal queries remain limited. Read terminal compatibility . Only run explicitly trusted targets: this backend is not a sandbox.